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Does this undocumented family deserve to stay in Toronto?

Since they came to Toronto from Mexico, this family has led a life of secrecy, while buying a home and running a successful business.

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They have two cars, owned a $650,000 home by the lake and run a successful landscaping company. By any account, the Diaz' are model hardworking and law-abiding immigrants that Canada wants.(Tara Walton/ Toronto Star)

They own two cars, a 3,000-sq-ft home by the lake and run a successful landscaping business that rings in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in revenue.

By most accounts, they are the hardworking and well-established immigrants that Canada needs and wants.

Since their arrival from Mexico in 2007, however, the Dias family has lived a life of secrecy — off the population map and, by necessity, the radar of Canadian immigration officials.

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Jose Dias, his wife Sofia, both in their 40s, their adult son Carlos and daughter Antonia are among tens of thousands of people in Greater Toronto who live and work here without legal status.

Known as “the undocumented,” they are failed refugee claimants dodging deportation or those who overstayed temporary work, student or visitor visas. Many are economic migrants, often from developing countries, seeking work or a better lifestyle.

With Toronto poised to become Canada’s first “sanctuary city,” which would open up municipally funded services to immigrants, legal or not, it raises the politically contentious question: Do these migrants deserve to stay?

The Dias family agreed to share their personal story though they asked that their names be changed to protect them from authorities. While their story may not represent the experience of all undocumented people, they say they want to show the human side to a vulnerable population.

“We want Canadians to see the other side of the story and understand why we do the things we do,” says Antonia. “We want a better life, which is not possible in Mexico.”

In many ways the undocumented are indistinguishable from ordinary Canadians and well-integrated in the community. They work, though often for low pay. They lay shingles, labour on construction sites, work in factories, clean offices and homes.

Their children attend public schools.

The parents typically pay tax — HST when they shop, property tax when they rent or own, and income tax on paycheques (though often made out to others here legally).

They feed a whole industry, from employers who rely on cheap labour and job recruiters who take their cut to payday loan managers who charge fees to cash the illegal’s paycheques.

The undocumented live in a constant state of fear. If caught, they most certainly face deportation. So they rarely report a crime, go to a doctor’s office or complain about unfair treatment by employers. They avoid the public library, or any other government service, for fear it will prompt questions about their status. Some parents go so far as to keep their kids home from school.

A City of Toronto report estimates there are anywhere between 100,000 and 250,000 undocumented migrants in the GTA, roughly 2 to 5 per cent of the population.

Estimates are extremely unreliable, however, because no one is able to track such a transient population. City officials hope that by extending services to them, they will have a better grasp of the nature and extent of illegal migration.

In 2015, their numbers are expected to surge when four-year work permits for thousands of temporary foreign workers, currently here legally, expire under a 2011 federal law, potentially moving thousands more underground. Last year alone, 340,000 foreigners on work permits resided in Canada.

To manage the new reality, Toronto City Council has asked staff to report in the fall on ways to improve access to municipal services — public health, shelters, food banks, after-school day care, breakfast programs, emergency medical services — for residents without legal status. It also urged Ottawa to consider a form of amnesty by giving them permanent status.

The issue of illegal migration is highly controversial in the United States, as the Senate passed its landmark immigration bill in June that will allow its estimated 11 million non-status residents to stay legally while boosting crackdown on future illegal migration by hiring 20,000 new border patrol officers and completing an 1,100-kilometre fence to guard the border with Mexico.

Crossing the border

Jose Dias twice paid smugglers to take him across the Mexico-United States border to look for work.

Since his early teens, Dias had worked a string of odd jobsin his hometown of Mexico City. A high school graduate, he cleaned dishes in a restaurant, worked in a night club, drove a cab and picked up general labour work.

Sofia, who met Jose at age 14, never finished high school and became a teenage mother.

By 1998 the couple, in their twenties, had three young kids under 10. Eager to earn more money for his family, Jose crossed the border with other migrantes indocumentados and spent a year in Houston doing drywall and framing. Each month he sent most of his paycheque back home.

“I didn’t want to go,” says Jose, a stocky man whose callused hands tell of years of hard labour. “But I had to go to support my family.”

His goal, he says, was to make enough money so his kids could go to university instead of taking on labour jobs out of high school.

The $14-an-hour pay was 10 times more than he made back home and boosted the family’s standard of living. His two daughters and son were able enroll in karate and other after-school programs, and the family renovated their home.

But Jose soon became homesick and returned to Mexico the following year.

He crossed the border again in 2005, this time to Los Angeles and again landed a job in construction. But a serious workplace accident cut his stay short. It also convinced him that he no longer wanted to be away from his family.

While on the job site cutting drywall, both his knees became caught in an electrical saw. He was loaded onto the employer’s truck and dumped at the entrance of a hospital where he underwent emergency surgery for torn ligaments. When discharged, he took the subway back to an apartment he shared with other Mexican workers. Scared, alone and with no English, he decided to pack up and go home.

The hard-earned money he made in Los Angeles just covered his medical costs and his trip home.

His next venture abroad in search of work, two years later, would take him not to the U.S. again, but to Canada, only this time he would bring his entire family.

Reflecting back on that decision today, Jose says simply: “I didn’t want to be away from my family again.”

A new life

Jose flew to Toronto in February 2007 at the suggestion of Sofia’s younger brother, who had already been working construction in Canada illegally for a decade.

“There were more job opportunities here than in the U.S., because there were so many illegal migrants fighting for jobs there,” Jose says of his decision to come to Canada.

Sofia arrived eight months later, followed by their three children, all teenagers by then, in the summer of 2008.

They arrived as tourists so didn’t need a visa to enter the country if they would only stay here under six months. That would change a year later when the Canadian government, in 2009, imposed visa requirements on all visitors from Mexico to curb a growing influx of refugees.

The family’s plan was to work and make as much money here as possible in the shortest time, perhaps a few years, and return home. Since they never filed a refugee claim, and Canada does not record visitors’ departures, the Dias family quietly settled into daily life without a paper trail.

Initially, all five moved into a one-bedroom basement apartment in a house in the northwest end of the city. They paid $700 a month in rent.

Antonia had just graduated from high school in Mexico and tried to enroll in several high schools in Etobicoke. She hoped to learn English, obtain an Ontario diploma and eventually study medicine.

She was turned away at school offices, she says, even though Ontario law stipulates no school can refuse school-aged children on the basis of their status.

“I was bitter and angry with the world,” she says. “I couldn’t go to school and I was afraid to go out because of my bad English.”

So Antonia, along with Carlos, her older brother, stayed home for an entire year.

Their sister Gabriela became homesick and after three months returned to Mexico. She has since married and has a son and daughter — grandchildren that Jose and Sofia will ever only meet on a computer screen so long as they remain in Canada without status.

The likelihood of Gabriela and the grandchildren paying a visit here is slim — she would have to disclose to the Canadian visa office in Mexico the whereabouts of her family in applying for a visitor’s visa. Authorities want assurance from most Mexican visitors that they have family ties to draw them back home.

Jose began working construction almost immediately after arriving here, earning $14 an hour. Sofia got a job at a local plant for $9 an hour through an employment agency.

Antonia and Carlos joined their mother on the assembly line a year later.

According to Antonia, the agency supplied workers to various factories around the GTA. The employers were well aware the labourers were illegal. “Almost everyone looking for jobs at the agency was without status,” she recalls.

What should have been a $400-a-week paycheque, she says, ended up being $260 by the time income tax was taken off — and the job agency took its own “deductions.” The agency had to be compensated for taking the risk of arranging illegal employment, the workers were told.

The same agency “charged 2 per cent to cash our paycheques because we didn’t have a social insurance number and bank account,” Antonia explains. It also held their cheques back a week, sometimes longer; they were given no explanation. They were often told if they didn’t want the job, somebody else would gladly take it.

Undocumented workers are seen as easy targets for abuse and exploitation by employers, including unpaid wages, long hours with no overtime pay and harassment. Parkdale Community Legal Services, the Workers’ Action Centre and other advocacy groups say few report employers or job recruiters to authorities.

Antonia recalls once being dispatched by the agency to work at a local manufacturer. The day she was supposed to be paid, the employer said he could not pay her because she was illegal. She was owed $100 in wages.

At another agency job working as a receptionist, Antonia says she was molested by her boss while alone in the office.

“He said I must have misunderstood him. He knew I had no status and told me not to go to the police and press charges.”

‘It is hard work’

On an unusually chilly day in May, Jose, Sofia, Antonia and Carlos leave their house at dawn and arrive at a two-storey brick residence in Markham before 7 a.m.

Antonia and Carlos start to unload onto the driveway piles of bricks the family had dropped off the day before. Their parents grab two spades and drive them into the ground, lifting and removing the sod on the sides and back of the house. When they are done, they will level and compact the ground with sand and stone, readying it for the creation of a patterned brick walkway.

Wearing a hoodie and black stretch pants, Sofia uses her workman’s boot to push the spade deep into the soil. She acknowledges it is heavy work, but says she and her husband wouldn’t have it any other way.

“We do the harder part to make it easier for our children,” she says smiling.

Bundled up under layers of clothes, Sofia and Antonia carefully put the bricks into a green trolley and push it over to Carlos, who is assigned the job of laying the large stones out like pieces of a puzzle.

“It is hard work, but we are used to it,” says Sofia, who has a red nose from the blustery wind, her hands shivering.

The family started up their own landscaping business last summer after their employer in Mississauga went bankrupt in 2012. Antonia and Carlos became unemployed. Sofia managed to find office-cleaning work, and later a cleaning job at a hotel under construction, but found the chemicals too overpowering.

“It was construction cleaning and I had to work with some harsh chemicals. It was just too much. I quit after two months,” said Sofia, who made $10 an hour and worked two shifts of 60 hours a week.

One day Sofia, Antonia and Carlos pitched to Jose the idea of starting a family landscaping company, which the head of the household initially shunned.

His wife persisted, telling him no employer was ever going to give them a fair opportunity. “Just give it a shot,” she told him.

The family registered their business under the name of Carlos’s wife, Mia, who was sponsored to Canada by her own father and is now a permanent resident. Through Jose’s developer and builder contacts, they began receiving subcontracts to do landscaping and interlock.

The self-employed work made life more bearable here, but it was the increasing violence of the drug war,widespread corruption and a slowing economy in Mexico that reinforced the family’s decision to remain in Canada.

“I don’t want to talk bad about my country,” says Sofia. “All I want is the best life, a safe life for my family.”

With steady employment and income — the business rang in $90,000 net profit last year — the family also found a permanent home along the lake.

They put a $120,000 down payment on a $650,000 home and got a bank mortgage under Carlos’s wife’s name and a separate $50,000 loan (at 15 per cent interest) from a private lender. Their monthly mortgage payments include $2,200 to the bank and $850 just for the interest on the one-year private loan.

“We work very hard. We get to our work site at 7 a.m. and finish at 7 p.m., sometimes seven days a week. We work hard and want to see our rewards,” says Antonia. “We put every single penny into this house. It is our biggest commitment now. We can’t miss a payment.”

Money was tight over the winter due to their seasonable work, so the family relied on Jose and Carlos pulling in money doing construction work in the lean months.

Sofia says she loves nature and owning a house minutes from the lake has been her dream. After work, a comfortable home is where the family says they can relax. Their long workdays don’t allow much time for a social life, so their main entertainment is watching DVDs on their flat screen TV.

Still, despite the peace and safety they have found in Canada the Diases say they feel like “a bird in a cage.”

“We pay a high price to be here. We have an isolated life. We can’t be with our family. We can’t have a barbeque and invite everybody to come. We want to do so many things but we can’t,” Jose laments.

“It is the people missing in our picture. I feel free, but not completely free.”

No going back

Last summer the family tooka three-day road trip to Montreal. They cannot travel by plane, which could expose them to immigration officials.

And at Christmas, they go to Blue Mountain to downhill ski, a sport they picked up after coming to Canada. Sofia loves the quiet and peaceful village feel.

The family misses Gabriela and longs to see her two children. Two years ago, when Jose’s father passed away, they could only grieve from afar.

“Once we decided to stay in Canada, we knew we can never go back to Mexico. We’ll never be able to leave Canada. If we go, it’s a one-way trip with no return,” says Sofia.

Antonia, who has a black belt in karate, joined a local club two years ago where she met a young man, now her boyfriend.

“He wanted to go to the U.S. and Mexico for vacation with his friends. Too many times, I tried to dodge it,” she says. “Finally, he asked me why I didn’t want to spend time with him. I told him the actual reason, that I had no status and couldn’t travel. He was fine with it and said I should have told him sooner.”

Now, Sofia has friends from her karate club and volunteers once a week leading a peer group for migrant youth at a refugee shelter.

Carlos and his wife, who works full-time in a factory, are expecting their first child in September while their inland spousal sponsorship is in process.

The Dias family has always paid for health care out of their own pocket, mainly at local walk-in clinics and including Sofia’s gall bladder surgery several years ago. But recently Sofia was diagnosed with a tumour in her uterus, believed to be benign. The family can’t decide whether to go ahead with the operation, estimated to cost $30,000.

The family insists they are not queue-jumpers, because there is no queue to jump for people like them. They would not be eligible to immigrate here legally under any Canadian program due to their lack of education, training and assets.

“All we want is a better life. Everyone has a right to a better life,” says Sofia.

“We feel Canadian. We feel we belong here. Our status is just details. It’s a label people put on us. We live normal. We have not done anything wrong.”

The Canadian government would disagree, as do critics of a “sanctuary city” for Toronto.

Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong made clear his views during a council debate on the subject earlier this year, when he said undocumented workers “are an insult to every immigrant who plays by the rules to get into the country.”

“It sends a message to the world that it is OK to break the law to come to Canada, and it says the City of Toronto is an accomplice to this lawbreaking.”

Jose and Sofia are now looking to apply for permanent resident status on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, by showing how well-established they have become in Canada.

They are gathering employment records and paystubs to file their first income tax returns, along with the $5,000 a year they pay in property tax and other documentation for their humanitarian immigration application.

“We have built a life here,” Sofia says. “But our future is uncertain. Of course, we could lose everything we have earned in tears and sweat by applying for status, but we have zero to go back to.”

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